I've Got Your Oil Spill Right Here

By Johnny Apocalypse
Bschin2188@aol.com
July 1st, 2010

So I used to be surrounded by people who couldn't stop ranting and raving about politics. Anti-right, anti-left, anti-establishment, anti-anti-establishment. It got old really quick, and that was when I was seven years old. I lived amongst these whiney bastards my whole life, but a few months ago I woke up and discovered that they had all disappeared. They'd been replaced by a new breed of bellyaching fuckers, who do nothing but bitch about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The worst part of this whole thing is that the few people I knew who were as non-political as me have jumped on the bandwagon and started carping over this issue. Being the non-news-reading guy that I am, I made it a full twelve hours of blissful unawareness over the whole issue once the first news story broke. I look back fondly over these times of ignorance, because before then no one was talking my ear off over the mess.

Let me make this blatantly clear. This oil spill is not my problem.

"But Johnny", some perturbed reader is saying, "this is everyone's problem!"

No, it's not. There are some six billion people on this planet, you can have all of them raising hell over an oil spill and do just fine without me. Here is why this is not my problem.

Reason number one: Most of my knowledge is fairly limited. I consider myself highly knowledgeable about movies, classic rock, and useless trivia that will effect nothing. I think I'm pretty well read on criminal justice (I seem to have a Bachelor's Degree in that subject for reasons unknown) and philosophy. I have a limited knowledge of medicine, mostly due to watching Discovery Channel and researching health problems before I annoy a doctor over them. But no where in the knowledge database I call a brain is there any sort of solution to the oil spill. Since I can't solve the problem, I'm keeping my nose out of it.

Reason number two: I have a finite quantity of give-a-damn in my system, and it's all used up. For those who don't know, give-a-damn is the organic chemical within us all, which allows us the time and energy to give a damn about any particular subject. Some people have a lot of give-a-damn in them, and some people (myself included) have a pretty miniscule amount. Here's what my give-a-damn is currently used up on. 1. Coffee. 2. Doing my job well. 3. What to have for lunch. 4. Remembering to pay my bills on time. 5. Seeing the A-Team movie and trying not to compare it to the TV show which I love. 6. More coffee. 7. Destroying the wasps that have burrowed into the side of my house. Nowhere on that list will you see the oil spill, and I have no room for it.

Generally, once I explain how this is in fact my problem, due to the widespread ecological problems this will cause, I explain again that I can't fix the oil spill itself, or the following ecological problems. Here's my approach to the worst-case scenarios the oil spill can cause, environmentally.

New ice age- I freeze to death.

Excessive global warming- I burn to death.

Eradication of all food sources in the world- I starve to death.

Now this may sound like giving up, but I have no desire to spend my every moment searching for warmth, relief from extreme heat or scrounging for food. Plus it's not so much giving up as it is leaving much needed resources for everyone else. You're welcome.

Don't bother contacting me over my stance on all of this. You'll be wasting your time. And I say "your time," not mine, because if you send me an e-mail, I'll read two words of it and delete it. Your time wasted writing an elaborate and well worded e-mail: five minutes. My time deleting it: two seconds. I can spare the two seconds. Want to complain about me on the Acid Logic guest book? Go ahead. I check that guest book maybe two or three times a year. I'll probably never see it.

And if you approach me on the street to harass me about this, by reading this statement you are giving me full legal permission to kick your ass and sodomize you with a dictionary. And I'm not talking about one of those pocket dictionaries either.

But since I'm not a complete bastard, I'll admit to having a good amount of sympathy for the people and businesses that will face economic hardships caused by the oil spill.

I'm getting tired of people calling this oil spill "the worst disaster in history" too, because it's not. Doesn't anybody remember the asteroid that clobbered the earth some sixty-five million years ago? The one that killed over half the life on earth, including the dinosaurs? And how about when Mount Tambora erupted back in 1815? That killed over 71,000 people, and who knows how many animal and plant deaths?

Instead of focusing on the negative impact of the oil spill, why not try to think in terms of the positive? How about turning an "ecological crisis" into an "ecological opportunity"? What could be opportunistic about this, you ask? Killing octopus. I hate those eight-limbed bastards and everything they stand for.

Octopus (and that is the proper plural, according to some book I read on proper English usage (the rest of the book I have opted to ignore)) are the creepiest things on the planet. You can complain all you want about spiders, I'd rather be devoured whole by an army of tarantulas then be within a square mile of an octopus. They have rectangular pupils, they're ridiculously smart, good at escaping tanks, and obscenely flexible due to a lack of bones and cartilage. Some of them are poisonous, some are camouflaged to look like seaweed, some can survive outside of the water for upwards of ten mintues, and some are strong enough to kill full-sized sharks.

Why do I know so much about octopus? Know your enemy.

By now someone is thinking "your fear of octopus isn't my problem, Johnny," in an effort to hit me with my own previous statement. But that's where you're wrong, friend. Some time ago, this philosopher cat named Nietzsche said that if you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. I still remember the day that I ran into an octopus. I was strolling around the Denver aquarium with the lady I was seeing at the time, amazed at the variety of ocean life and what-have-you, when I turned a corner and came face-to-face with a massive octopus. Eye contact was made, and he smelled my terror. With an evil grin (at least, I think he was grinning), he let me in on the octopus secret.

"That's right, buddy," he telepathically spoke to me, "be afraid. Soon we'll be in charge. It's only a matter of time."

So if this oil spill manages to kill a few thousand octopus, it may be more of a win then we're willing to admit. If we can buy a little time by thinning their numbers, then there's still hope for us all. At that point, all of my sympathy over the oil spill is left to the various industries who may well go out of business. But at least we'll be alive.

Holy crap, that was more complaining then I was expecting to do. I should probably try to end this on a positive note. Let's see, something upbeat, something upbeat. Hey, you ever read a short story called "The Chromium Fence" by Philip K. Dick? Good stuff. Highly recommended.